TV for the Both of You

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TV for the Both of You

At last, a way to end squabbles over which TV channel to watch – without buying a second set. Sharp has developed a liquid-crystal display that shows totally different images to people viewing the screen from the left and the right.

One person can be surfing the internet, using the display as a PC screen, while another watches a downloaded movie or TV broadcast. It also works for watching two TV channels.

The "two-way viewing-angle LCD" will go into mass production this month and will cost roughly twice as much as a standard display.

Sharp will offer the product for worldwide sale, but the company will also supply other manufacturers with the displays for various products expected later this year.

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Who's in charge?: A U.N. panel created to recommend how the internet should be run in the future has failed to reach consensus but did agree that no single country should dominate.

The United States stated two weeks ago that it intended to maintain control over the computers that serve as the internet's principal traffic cops.

In a report, the U.N. panel outlined four possible options for the future of internet governance for world leaders to consider at a November "Information Society" summit.

Some countries were satisfied with the current arrangement, while others, particularly developing ones, wanted to wrest control from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is controlled by the United States, and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations.

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Flying high: Substantial challenges remain to the in-flight use of mobile phones even if communications regulators ease their ban, the Federal Aviation Administration told lawmakers.

FAA rules restricting the use of portable electronic devices on aircraft can be waived but a carrier would have to show that each model of phone posed no threat to aircraft navigation or communications systems.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed lifting its ban on in-flight mobile-phone use, provided it is technically feasible and does not overwhelm ground-based networks.

The FAA last year allowed a test of a "pico cell" device on an American Airlines (AMR) plane that was designed to keep phones operating at their lowest power level. And last month the FAA gave United Airlines approval to install equipment on a 757 aircraft that will give passengers wireless internet access.

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Losing streak: Samsung said that second-quarter profits fell 46 percent, largely due to a sharp drop in prices for computer chips.

Samsung, South Korea's biggest company by market capitalization, said it earned $1.63 billion in the three months ended June 30, down from $3 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Prices for Samsung's mainstay businesses – chips, mobile phones and liquid-crystal displays used in computer monitors and televisions – peaked in the first half of last year. Profit margins have since been eroded by a global oversupply of dynamic random access, or DRAM, chips and LCDs, and stiffer competition in the mobile-phone business.

Samsung said its average DRAM selling price fell by almost half during the quarter to the high $3 level from the high $6 level in the same period last year.